All CFO Articles

Finance chiefs – and those who hire them – agree that having overseas experience on a résumé is one of the keys to a corner office in today’s global marketplace. But it takes more than just sitting in an office in another time zone to be successful in the long term.

Apple’s new CFO pick may signal more rewards on the horizon for shareholders. Luca Maestri, who is taking over the CFO reins from Peter Oppenheimer, joined Apple last year after a two-year stint as Xerox’s CFO. During his tenure there, Xerox sharply increased its share repurchases, to $1.1 billion in 2012, from $700 million in 2011 and none in 2010, the WSJ’s Daisuke Wakabayashi and CFOJ’s Emily Chasan report.

President Obama is set to unveil his 2015 budget this week. The White House blueprint is expected to include changes to the tax code to limit what it views as tax evasion among some U.S. companies with overseas operations, a boost for infrastructure funding and an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit for workers without children, among other provisions, the WSJ says. The budget also is expected to point to an overhaul of the immigration system, which administration officials say could help reduce the deficit.

Janet Yellen isn’t sure if the recent stretch of bad weather is to blame for the soft economic data over the past few weeks. “A number of data releases have pointed to softer spending than analysts had expected,” the Fed chairwoman told members of the Senate Banking Committee yesterday. “That may reflect in part adverse weather conditions, but at this point it is difficult to discern exactly how much.” The Fed’s uncertainty likely puts its policy plans on cruise control for now, meaning continued reductions in monthly bond purchases unless the weak data persist and change the officials’ view about the economic outlook, write the Journal’s Jon Hilsenrath and Pedro Nicolaci da Costa.

Every decision about where and how we work represents an opportunity to manage the business better. Commercial real estate costs – still soaring in many urban areas – and changing employee and client demands are increasingly driving companies to move to a more flexible work environment that involves telework, customer-site work, and “hoteling” – space that can be reserved for days at a time.

More companies are straying from GAAP when it comes to determining executive bonuses. Last year, 542 companies said they determine compensation using financial measurements that differ from U.S. accounting standards, according to an analysis by Audit Analytics for The Wall Street Journal. That’s more than twice the 249 companies that did so in 2009. As the Journal’s Michael Rapoport writes, the practice can be controversial because it strips out various costs—from employee stock payments to asset write-downs—that can depress profits. “Everything you can think of to manipulate this has been done,” says Gary Hewitt, head of research at GMI Ratings, a corporate-governance research firm.